...and their relation to Iran.
Adolf Hitler made a career of breaking treaties and immediately offering to work within them once again, all the while advancing his military position against that of the Western alliance. He started from a position that could kindly be described as prostrate when he came to office in 1932 and immediately began working on building his arsenal in secret. As Hugh Hewitt notes, the first major test of Hitler's program came when he defied the Versailles Treaty and reoccupied the Rhineland. He had two divisions, a ridiculously small force that could easily have been routed by Britain and France without even much of strain. Instead of confronting Hitler, they meekly shrugged at his defiance, rationalizing it (as the British put it) as simply walking into his own back yard. Hitler won that test of wills and knew the true measure of his foes. He would not miscalculate their will until at least his attack on Poland, and even then he correctly guessed that neither country would actually open a new front in the West until well after he had digested Poland. In fact, they would wait until Hitler attacked them almost a year later.
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I know history rarely repeats itself but I cannot but notice the similarities between Gamal Abd'l Nasser and Ahmadinejad, between May 1967 and April 2006. The military swagger, the mobilization of the populations, the threats to annihilate Israel are all reminiscent of Gamal Abdul-Nasser's Egypt. Then, as now, the real target was the US and the real goal the leadership of the greater Middle East. Then as now, the US was mired in a lengthy unpopular counter insurgency and the Israeli leadership seemed weak. Then as now, the West appeared divided and paralyzed and the UN appeasing.
Then, Nasser challenged the UN by demanding that it withdraw the UNEF forces positioned between Israel and Egypt as part of the UN negotiated deal which led to Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the Sinai after the 1956 war. The Security Council responded by sending Secretary General U Thant to discuss the Egyptian demands. While U Thant was on his way to Cairo, Nasser escalated the crisis by announcing the closure of the Straits of Tiran.
Instead of turning around U Thant not only went, agreed immediately to withdraw all the UNEF forces from Egypt and issued an appeal for a cooling off period on terms which, the horrified Ralph Bunch complained, placed him "in position of effectively endorsing the blockade and fully implementing it without any further effort by Nasser." The Six Day War became known as U Thant's War.
Things happening today are eerily similar...
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